Micah Challenge Australia Blog

The Micah Challenge blog is a space for discussion and debate about the issues of global poverty, faith, advocacy and justice and the Millennium Development Goals. This blog aims to provoke thought and challenge you to learn more about the issues discussed. We welcome your comments.

Micah Challenge is a global campaign of Christians speaking out against poverty and injustice. Click here to visit the Micah Challenge website.

By Amanda Jackson , Campaigns and Advocacy Coordinator, Micah Challenge International As an Australian with great love for my adopted home in London, I have been following with interest the bid by England to host the 2018 World Cup. In terms of global audience and the money generated, it is the world's biggest sporting competition. The bid process is expensive. It is estimated that England spent $26 million in an effort to host it in 2018. In the end they received only 2 votes out of a possible 22 (Russia won). The decision caused much angst in the nation that invented the sport. What had gone wrong? Some said the vote was a backlash against a BBC program , which exposed corruption in the way international football is run. The BBC revealed that three executives of football's governing body, FIFA, took bribes as part of a wider corruption scandal totaling around $100 million in secret payments. A fourth FIFA boss was accused of involvement in the corrupt sale of World Cup tickets. All four voted in the World Cup bid for 2018. You may not think… read more

By Micah Challenge's International Director, Joel Edwards Curiosity might kill the cat, but since when should compassion kill the aid worker? When news broke about the brutal murder of ten aid workers in Afghanistan I was in Sweden with a room full of missionaries - some of whom had been in Afghanistan. I was about to preach on what the prophet Micah had to say about justice... The aid workers were from a Christian based International Assistance Mission (IAM) and killed in a remote area of the Sharrun Valley. There is still some mystery about whether or not the Taleban were responsible for the murders. The killings had the tell-tale signs of bandits as opposed to Taleban insurgence. And the discussion has also led to whether or not they were missionaries. As everyone knows not everyone who works with Christian agencies are necessarily committed Christians. It's like assuming that anyone who is paid by the army is necessarily a soldier. But why should such energy be spent in discussing whether or not people are Christian missionaries or not? In the 21st century… read more

Micah Challenge International Director, Joel Edwards reflects on WikiLeaks If God was WikiLeak what would become of us. Does justice always have to go public - even if its risks other people's lives? I have to admit my ignorance and say that before they unveiled 90,000 secret documents about the war in Afghanistan, WikiLeaks was a complete secret to me. I thought someone had misspelt Wikipedia. The decision to reveal hitherto unknown information about US and Coalition military action has apparently shown up evidence of civilian casualties previously denied by the governments and secret communications between Allied forces and Afghan informants. Needless to say it has created a political storm with politicians in Whitehall and the Whitehouse working overtime on damage limitation exercises. Right now there is critical concern about how far WikiLeak has exposed informants to Taleban firing squads. But in all of this Julian Assange, WikiLeak's CEO, remains unrepentant. His only concern he says is to reveal truth in the pursuit of justice. And he justifies… read more

Micah Challenge International Director, Joel Edwards reflects on God and natural disasters Does putting God 'in the dock' over disasters or poverty issues help us see who he really is? The age-old question of Caring God vs Tyrannical Bully raises its head again in the wake of new year disasters... Why does a good God allow disasters such as earthquakes in Haiti and Chile to happen? It's the question which has put Christians on the spot for centuries. Great minds such as the Christian apologist C S Lewis and more contemporary writers such as Philip Yancey have wrestled with God and the problem of pain. The question pushes Christians in a tight place because it actually puts God himself in the dock. And there isn't anybody alive who hasn't done that at some point. And it's an important issue because what it does in effect is to raise a fundamental question about whether or not God really is concerned with our well being or just a very big bully who has bouts of kindness. Asking questions about God's goodness in disasters is one thing; demonising God is quite… read more

Yesterday, on a cool winter's evening at AusAid headquarters in Canberra, Gershon, Eliza and I had the good fortune of attending the foreign aid budget briefing. As we walked into a large room,… [more]

I came across the following article praising our 'Theology of Climate Change' paper on the Christian Today website. I was encouraged to see that the effort of our Theological Working Group has been… [more]

The Micah Challenge blog is a space for discussion and debate about the issues of global
poverty, faith and justice. The views represented in blog posts are those of the individual
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